Results and Effectiveness
Three days after launch, our PDF portfolio had been downloaded over 130,000 times. Two weeks in, we surpassed 230,000 downloads— averaging16,500/day, much greater than our 4,893 goal. At programme’s end, we had increased downloads by 70%.
We achieved the lowest cost-per-PDF download and decreased cost from the previous campaign by 77%.
Awareness of Acrobat 9’s four key features all saw positive increases, some as high as 79%.
The updateable bracket was voted the #1 reason for repeat visits- not only did we change how users engaged with content they cared about, but we earned their preference over ESPN’s traditional platform.

Creative Execution
The creative strategy was to do something that had never been done before during the tournament, or online for that matter: use our product and its technology as the creative medium itself.
To effectively integrate and showcase the new A9 product features, we chose to partner with ESPN, the leading sports website during the tournament and override their tournament challenge platform.
Instead of users printing out their NCAA brackets and looking up the latest scores online, our PDF portfolio did this for them. In addition to the updateable bracket, the PDF portfolio featured exclusive ESPN content. We streamed Team Preview videos, and used the live newsfeed feature to show the latest March madness headlines and fan polls without leaving the PDF.
By downloading the A9 portfolio, users were placed directly into the product interface and able to experience its multimedia features- all within content that they were passionate about.

Insights, Strategy & the Idea
PDFs are the “worker bees” of the business world—unseen, unsung, and unremarkable.
This changed when Adobe released a radically upgraded version, Acrobat 9. Users could now insert video, Flash, collaborate live, and connect online, all within the PDF.
The challenge was that outside of release fatigue, office workers perceived acrobat as a ‘flat’ PDF. We were tasked with increasing awareness of its new features and driving downloads.
How do you sell a new worker bee to the workers? We didn’t. Instead, we changed our approach.
What if we looked at office workers, not as a business target but as real people with interests outside of work?
Instead of telling them about the new features, we needed to show them within content they cared about and at scale.
37 million office workers would complete a March Madness bracket- the advanced features of Acrobat made for an ideal branded content opportunity.